


Petrichor

by LORBEERPRINZ



Series: Zine Fics [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 21:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21308749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LORBEERPRINZ/pseuds/LORBEERPRINZ
Summary: [written for Wind's Brand]Soren had always had a difficult relationship with the peculiar weather condition that was rain. Sometimes it was his friend, often his foe, and especially during his younger years the smells it brought had felt so much more prominent than they did afterwards. But no matter where he went, the rain would always follow him.
Series: Zine Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643614
Kudos: 7
Collections: Wind's Brand zine





	Petrichor

He liked rainy days. Sure, the mud that would collect between his naked toes felt slimy and made his step slippery sometimes, but the rain had so many advantages. It cleaned him, in summer it might even be warm if he was lucky, the air would smell nicer than normally. It made his hair stick to his head, which could be annoying on the one hand, but more importantly, it made it much easier to hide what he had quickly understood made him so different from anyone else around him.  
People could be very transparent about why they hated someone, even if they tried to play blind.  
He wasn’t stupid.

But when it was raining, there were moments when he was lucky enough to come across people, _ humans _ mostly, who would not realize what he was. Sometimes when he dared to enter a village he’d encounter some old lady or two who saw nothing but a shivering, haggard child. If he was lucky, they gave him a piece of bread or an apple. On unlucky days, he would receive a gold coin or two.  
He didn’t have much need for money.   
Most merchants didn’t care for him. Even if they didn’t silently ignore him in the first place, they had no patience for a boy who could do nothing but point at the things he wanted. In the end, they turned a blind eye to him just like anyone else. A few of them would take his coins and give nothing in return.  
He had considered saving his money, but quickly decided it wasn’t worth it. He had seen what clothes usually cost, with these very few times people – old people mostly, people with awful eyesight and generally bad senses – gave him something it would take him years to save up enough to buy a new shirt or a pair of shoes.  
But he had found another use. Everything ran on money in this world, it was the cornerstone of society, he had figured this out early in life. It wasn’t hard to notice. And as such, even Laguz needed it, despite their proud claims. After all, they too had marketplaces and businesses, and when the boy found himself chased by cats or birds that had no patience for a “filthy parentless” like himself, he would throw the coins from his ragged pockets behind him.  
It didn’t always work, instincts winning over greed, but a few times his pursuers were at the very least startled enough by his actions to win him a few precious seconds. It wasn’t a valid strategy, however.  
But anything that gave him more chances at survival was welcome in the boy’s book.

So many times the young boy longed for shelter from the rain, however. Trees would not hold it off forever, long sessions of continuous torrents drenched him to the pores of his skin so deeply he often found himself thinking he might freeze to death. Especially during the harsher times of the year, rain was usually more punishing than even snow, a thousand icy needles pouring down on him.  
Sometimes he looked at his hands and feet and found them to be almost entirely white. Even the nice smell was gone, it always seemed to him.  
The lighted windows of houses and huts around had him long for the warmth of a home, the warmth he had once experienced himself, despite the lack of actual hospitality. He didn’t care for that human kindness, only knew what it was supposed to look like from observation. All he needed during such days was something to stop his body from shivering, his limbs stiffening at the same time.  
Sometimes it was hard to walk, hard to sit, hard to breathe.  
But the rain could also be a protector. When it kept going for especially long, was accompanied by storms or other predicaments, the boy was all by himself. Everyone sought shelter. Nobody would disturb him, look at him, sneer at him, hurt him. Under the clouded sky, he could slip through villages mostly undetected, wander territories patrolled by Laguz.

On one of these grey days he had received a mantle – or rather, a long, torn, dirty piece of fabric. Someone had thrown it at him while he had tried to make his way through a village in a region the name of which he couldn’t even remember. He’d looked back to see a man in surprisingly fine threads, who stared back at him, sneered and returned into his tailor shop. Other pieces of soaked cloth waited in a basket in the next alleyway. Trash.  
He wrapped it around himself, not that it helped anything against the rain that had probably already found a way down to his bones. But he was able to cover his matted hair, the clothes that were way too small by now, his dirty, bloody arms and legs. His brand.  
It gave him another chance of getting around easier, at least in the presence of humans.  
It was a nice fabric, very smooth despite the wetness, he was sure it would feel even better once it had dried. He liked its dark color, which would let him blend in with the shadows even better.

The cloak made him a little more comfortable, and bolder. He found a small library in the same town, tiptoed into the building on freezing feet, left gold coins at the entrance in hope it would mellow the guards. It seemed to work.  
He found some paper and ink, took books and retreated into the furthest corner of the building, meticulously copied the spells he found in them word for word, mimicking even the font as closely as possible. When he was finished, he left quickly with his notes, stuffed them into his tiny pouch together with his last coins and crumbs of food.

Unfortunately, the rain was harsh on his newfound defense. The first time he had to take out these spells, it was fine. He could read them well, they worked as expected. As long as the weather was nice to him, he had nothing to fear.  
Of course this would not last very long. A flimsy piece of paper covered with cheap ink could only withstand so many instances of water. The cloak, while nice, was not thick enough to provide significantly more protection once the seasons had shifted towards more unwelcoming conditions.  
The last time he had to rely on his notes, they were nigh-impossible to read. He knew how the spells ran, they were the only sort of verbal communication he knew, after all, but in the heat of the moment, with enemies on his toes that easily made him understand they wanted to see him dead just for who he was, he couldn’t remember them. And the words on his papers had run into one another, turned into black blobs.  
He lost his notes that day, as well as the cloak, the pouch, everything.  
But his life was left, though this was only because he had managed to fool his pursuers into thinking the opposite.

The rain had mocked him that day, poured more and more icy drops on him to make his misery just worse. He had nothing left but the mud clinging to his skin, mixing with his blood, crawling into his wounds.  
Had he been able to think clearly that moment, he might have wished for an infection to kill him. He wouldn’t feel the pain of it anyway.

Instead, the next time he opened his eyes, he saw a pair of dirty, simple boots in front of him. The rain seemed to have stopped.  
Or maybe he had just lost the ability to feel.

The boy hardly registered what happened after that. He noticed how the voice attached to the boots began to yell, more boots and voices followed shortly after. Hands around him. Murmurs. Someone picked up something next to him, maybe a leftover scrap of his spells.  
Next time he could clearly see, hear, feel, he was in a room, damp but warm. The new wave of rain was nothing more than a distant rush, a hum in the back of his head.  
Things changed from that day on, and the rain once again became his friend.

But the sound of it never changed. No matter where he was, the time that had passed, it was always the same. Soren liked it more than ever now, just sitting in front of a window or below a thick tree, staring at the world through these drops.  
Over the years, he had found more advantages and disadvantages of this peculiar weather condition, though his personal liking of it was unshaken. In the end, it had always helped him more than it had hurt him, but of course, the mage could not let this bleed into his profession.  
So he would just sit there occasionally, if his time allowed it, and listen to the songs the rain sung, its duets with the winds. Maybe, he found himself wondering occasionally, he had gravitated towards wind magic because it was the closest he would get to manipulating the weather in his favors. After all, the rain had often brought winds along as well, they were close familiars and could be just as soothing and harsh.

From his cozy spot, Soren watched as Ike and Mist hurried by, the teenage girl trying to hide from the rain under her brother’s cape. The mage couldn’t hide a smile when the two began to quarrel over this, although it was impossible for him to hear their exact arguments. By the end of it, Ike just sighed and pulled Mist closer until they were both comfortable.   
It was always like this. Soren had witnessed countless similar instances during rainy times, no matter where he had gone. People huddling together, parents pulling hoods over their children, teaching them to hold their umbrellas up straight. Soren had simply learned to do all of that by himself. At least whenever he actually had the luxury of a hood. Sometimes he would use it independently from the weather, just because he liked it. It reminded him of the sensation of the tattered but soft cape, the first time he had felt he had owned something just for himself, no matter if it had been meant to be trash or not.  
The mage inhaled deeply, enjoyed the fresh smell of the air that the weather brought with it. It was almost sweet, in a way, definitely relaxing and somehow… gentle, as much as a smell could be this. Usually this was not an adjective he would attach to a smell.  
Maybe it wasn’t the sound that had brought back all those memories, maybe it had been the almost indescribable fragrance of it all along. After all, just as the rain itself it had been a constant throughout his life, throughout anyone’s life, as it had always enwrapped him.

He pulled his dark hood closer and rose his hand for a tiny wave as his eyes locked with Ike’s until the siblings were out of view.

He definitely liked rainy days.  


**Author's Note:**

> So, admittedly, this fic is old already, and by that I mean almost a year. It was created for the Soren fanzine "Wind's Brand", but let's just say that my relationship with this zine is... complicated. As of this writing, I'm not even sure if it'll ever come out, to be honest. But enough of that, I still like the fic a surprising amount, considering how quick I usually am to disown my own works lol  
Writing it was very nice and I'm quite happy with how it came out as I spent a lot of time getting the atmosphere right. I hope this actually comes across and it's not just me thinking it does because I've worked on it so much, haha.


End file.
